himself.

He fancied that all was now over between him and Frau Kahle. His
acquaintance with women of her stamp had never been extensive, and to
read the soul of one so utterly false and grossly sensual as this
inveterate coquette, was quite beyond the ability of Lieutenant
Pommer, analysis of his own or anybody else's character not being his
strong point.

He had, however, miscalculated Frau Kahle's fascinations over his
unsophisticated self, and decidedly underestimated her craving for
admiration. He was made aware of this when he next met her, on the day
following. She greeted him with a smile so bewitching and a
half-expressed sense of intimacy so flattering to his _amour propre_,
that he was unable to resist. Soon these two became the talk of the
little town. No matter if Pommer, looking at his inner self within the
quiet retreat of his own bachelor quarters, bitterly bewailed his
renewed fall from grace, her influence over the coarser fibre in his
being easily triumphed over his qualms of conscience.

He frequently met Borgert during this period, but the latter, far from
training once more on him the battery of his eloquence, contented
himself with some facetious remark or with a Mephistophelian grin.
And for Kahle himself, he was probably the only one in the
garrison--as is the fate of husbands too often in such cases--who was
not in the slightest aware of the "goings-on" of his nominal partner
in the joys and sorrows of life. And, besides, his tasks as chairman
of the Casino's house committee kept him, together with his official
duties, practically away from home all day long, and frequently far
into the night.

Pommer was, as we have seen, not precisely of delicate stuff, either
bodily or in his psychic makeup. But the chains he was wearing
nevertheless galled him, and he not seldom manoeuvred with his charmer
to obtain release; but all in vain. More than once he thought
seriously of writing to Captain Kahle himself, confessing his guilt,
glossing over her own share of it, and offering all the reparation in
his power. That would mean, of course, exposing his own precious life
to the unerring bullet of the captain; but even that outlook appeared
to him preferable to his present life of deceit. He now regretted that
he had not followed, the morning after the Casino hop, his first
impulse of making a clean breast of it to Captain Kahle. Thus weeks
dragged on, and there was no prospect of a change in a situati